Habs offensive expectations: Season review

The Habs were back with an old winning recipe: get outshot and have your goalie play above his head. And the good news kept coming. The team cracked the 200-goal mark this week!

Here are the numbers since Michel Therrien took over as coach. Believe it or not, the Habs progressed, albeit at a snail's pace.

I know for some of us, it might sound disappointing to hear that despite the various injuries and the numerous rookie Montreal dressed, the Habs almost met the original objective of 224 goals that I projected to start the year.

Here are the numbers for this year for all the skaters who played for the Habs

Pace stats are projected over a full season of hockey (82 games).

The objective was 224 goals. We are 8 goals short and it's definitely Pacioretty's fault! Just kidding.

We have 40 different players here to evaluate. Let's eliminate those who played less than 8 games (10%). We have 32 players left. Out of those players 21 were forwards, and 11 were defencemen. I split the results by % of players who reached the objectives.

We see a passing grade almost everywhere except for the defenceman goals. The rookie excuse is not valid here. I considered the following players as rookies this year: Sven Andrighetto, Daniel Carr, Phillip Danault, Darren Dietz, Joel Hanley, Lucas Lessio, Stefan Matteau, Michael McCarron and Greg Pateryn. I didn't include Jacob de la Rose, who played the majority of his games last year.

If we exclude Stefan Matteau, who has been rather underwhelming, they all exceeded my expectations in one category or another. Of course, my expectations where low for them given that Michel Therrien has tough time trusting rookies with ice time. The many injuries did, however, force him to play them more.

Carr and Andrighetto showed what they could do within a few games of playing with skill players. Joel Hanley was quiet a surprise in terms of points, although his possession numbers were brutal. All the rookie defencemen collected the same number of points, if not more, than Tom Gilbert.

Thumbs up

• Alex Galchenyuk exceeded my expectations. I was expecting 25 goals this year and hopefully 30 next year.
• Gallagher can be considered as a legitimate 25 goal-scorer if healthy.
• Pacioretty came short in terms of goals, but showed his playmaking skills while playing with Galchenyuk.
• Weise and Fleischmann also provided more than expected, but fortunately both Andrighetto and Carr were an acceptable replacement for the aforementioned departed players.
• All in all, the team slowly progressed in terms of 5v5 offense (146 vs 145 last year). They had more shots than the two previous seasons and despite the number of rookies they managed to score more goals this year. Yes, we complain a lot about the low number of goals this year but they were only shutout twice. Of course they didn't score 224 goals but we are talking about a margin of 3.6%. It's starting to seem like defensive woes are what sunk the Habs this year.

Thumbs down

• Tomas Plekanec had a tough season this year in terms of goal after a super start. He had shots and we can't really blame his low shooting percentage as he seemed to favor no angle shots a lot this year.
• The anemic powerplay might explain why the defenders failed to meet offensive expectations. Despite that situation, Markov and Subban had very decent seasons.

As it stands, the goal will be to improve next season. To accomplish this, Galchenyuk will need to score as many goals, but in a more consistent manner.

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